UCLA addresses ‘lost in translation’ issues in Chinese medicine

Millions of people in the West today utilize traditional Chinese medicine, including acupuncture, herbs, massage and nutritional therapies. Yet only a few U.S. schools that teach Chinese medicine require Chinese-language training and only a handful of Chinese medical texts have so far been translated into English.

Given the complexity of the language and concepts in these texts, there is a need for accurate, high-quality translations, say researchers at UCLA’s Center for East–West Medicine. To that end, the center has published a document that includes a detailed discussion of the issues involved in Chinese medical translation, which is designed to help students, educators, practitioners, researchers, publishers and translators evaluate and digest Chinese medical texts with greater sensitivity and comprehension.

“This publication aims to raise awareness among the many stakeholders involved with the translation of Chinese medicine,” said principal investigator and study author Dr. Ka-Kit Hui, founder and director of the UCLA center.

The 15-page document, “Considerations in the Translation of Chinese Medicine” was developed and written by a UCLA team that included a doctor, an anthropologist, a China scholar and a translator. It appears in the current online edition of the Journal of Integrative Medicine.

Authors Sonya Pritzker, a licensed Chinese medicine practitioner and anthropologist, and Hanmo Zhang, a China scholar, hope the publication will promote communication in the field and play a role in the development of thorough, accurate translations.

The document highlights several important topics in the translation of Chinese medical texts, including the history of Chinese medical translations, which individuals make ideal translators, and other translation-specific issues, such as the delicate balance of focusing translations on the source-document language while considering the language it will be translated into. More.

I'm not convinced, because this is very PC about TCM, i.e. it assumes that TCM is legitimate. There's only one place where the mask slips: "...many translators arguing that Chinese medicine must be put into modern medical terms in order to avoid being seen as a relic in the contemporary global medical world."Much TCM stuff is just dumb, and the translator's objective in many cases is to make it palatable.

Also quite disappointed that this document appears to accept the existence of a single language "Chinese". TCM documents have been written in several different languages: Classical Chinese, Literary Chinese, early modern and modern Mandarin. They're different, and it's important to have an appreciation of that.

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"Classical Chinese, especially classical medical Chinese, is comprised of unique grammar and structure that require a deep familiarity in order to interpret and translate. It is critical that translators be trained in basic classical grammar patterns when translating a classic text..."

I'm not sure that training in basic grammar patterns is enough, but it is at least mentioned.

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Orrin CumminsJapan Local time: 07:41Member (2013) Japanese to English + ...

Hmm

Jul 4, 2014

This reminds me of an interview I saw with Jackie Chan where he was railing against people who poach elephants and tigers and other rare animals in China just because they think that a body part from that animal makes your back not ache or something.